Right, it's been a while since I've posted here, but rest assured I've remained abreast of the many ins and outs of what's been going on, and I felt I should at least put my two cents on the table.

Firstly, I feel like we have started to lose sight of the most important rule of any game - having fun. For the two or so years that I've been a part of TFNC, it has remained something that I have looked forward to attending at the end of every week, at the end of school, college, or even after a week of doing nothing at all. However, as I type this out, munching on my leftover pizza from last Friday and with the Skyrim theme tune reminding me to unpause it before it crashes, I feel like in the past few months things have become almost political and, as I said, I feel people have become somewhat disenchanted with it as they have lost sight of the need to put fun first. If that is indeed the case then we all need to have a sit down and a serious talk about the future of the group.

Secondly, I sympathise with Gruff. I think that, without really thinking about it, the Gloucester lot and Matt have somewhat alienated – albeit unintentionally – Gruff, and to an extent the others in the group, as we often chat not only about the night's entertainment but also about what we might wish to play in the future. Although it hasn't crossed my mind until now, I feel as though this was the wrong place entirely to be discussing such things – it is, after all, an exchange that the entire group should make, and therefore a "pre-dialogue conclusion" for half of the group shouldn't be necessary, and may actually be detrimental to any decision made by the entire group. It is paramount that everyone gets their say, even if their only comment is "I don't mind what we play."

Lastly, whilst I agree that it’s important that everyone has fun, there is no way to please absolutely everyone at once. Some people will enjoy the roleplay aspect of gaming most of all, and it is inevitable that that’ll be someone else’s pet hate. Some people enjoy open-ended games, some people enjoy dungeon crawlers where all you do is hack generic enemies to bits, and yet more will enjoy a film noire detective puzzle-solving ventures where a session needn’t have a single die rolled in order to make progress. It falls not only to the GM to cater – or at least endeavour to cater – to these players, but also other participants. If you know someone doesn’t enjoy the roleplay aspect of a game, then asking them for in-game information will most likely end in “I have no idea whatsoever” or words to that effect.

I’m not going to tell anyone how to run a game – after all, you all have far more experience than I do at doing so – but I feel it’s crucial for the sake of TFNC that everyone makes a concerted effort to work together, not to pick a small issue and make a big thing about it. Everyone has their flaws, but it’s important to be able to look past those, because that’s what friends do. And I’ve come to think of all of you as friends, and quite frankly if for whatever reason The Friday Night Club came to an end, I’d be a little stumped as to what else to do on a Friday night. Probably something awfully boring, like college work or something. Ugh.

Anyway, I've written far too much. I could probably go on, but my pizza is getting fearfully cold and the Skyrim music is getting very, very repetitive.

The one I agree with most, is that we will not please everybody all the time, but this is the crux of the problem as far as I can see it.

Logic would dictate group events and direction are decided by majority vote, but it seems we also operate a 'veto' system where just one naysayer will scupper any endeavour and cause our current situation which is essentially continual vetoed gridlock.

I understand that not every game is for everybody, but if every game we play has someone pissed off, sulking or otherwise not getting involved this situation will not go away; regardless of whether it is a new game or an old game and THAT is what needs sorting out.

I think if everybody (myself included) could chill out a bit, put aside their own petty foibles and get stuck in to what we meet up to do; taking a character, whether a wizard, scoundrel, investigator or space marine and try to bring them to life and go where the adventure takes them then the magic of Friday nights could be rekindled.

Perhaps we need to draw a game system and GM out of a hat and just abide by the decision and strive to enjoy our evening no matter what the fickle gaming gods throw at us!

_____________________
Baggins
Yes I am drunk, but you are ugly and in the morning i shall be sober.

However the concept of "take a character and run with it" assumes that you actually understand what the hell is going on.

I simply do not understand most of the Eclipse Phase character sheet [and no reading the book will not help unless it is in plain English. And as to the game itself most of it makes little sense to me [Again this is no reflection on Stu]. And yes the same applies to Traveller.

I am happy to play anything, as long as I can actually get involved, and that requires me to understand the game, the mechanics of it, and what is actually going on. I may be type cast as a slugger, but I believe I do get involved in discussion during the game, when I can. Please correct me if I am wrong.

As to a "veto", there are 7 of us, if one or even 2 people don't want to play something then there is no reason I can see why they cannot sit it out and return afterwards. Again please comment.

I personally do not like excluding people; your exile from Traveller, whilst self imposed is something, for me, that should be avoided at all costs, but I cannot speak for anyone else in this regard.

I'm sorry for appearing difficult, but I just do not see what there is not to understand? A character sheet is just a record sheet after all and whilst the terminology changes from game to game, all RPG's have the same fundamentals; how good you are at things, how difficult you are to hurt, how good you are at fighting back and what it takes to kill you or drive you insane. Everything else is just dressing to make that game 'unique'.

If you don't understand the sheet, write your own with what information you need to play your character. If you don't like wading through all the bells and whistles, then don't.

As Mike stated, if people are struggling, then we help them. Nothing in any RPG needs a degree to understand and can easily be taught, even by comparing it to terms you are familiar with; Eclipse Phase is extremely similar in many ways to Cthulhu, d100 based, a skill list and even separate tracking of physical and mental damage.

For me, you cannot understand one game without at least having a grasp of the other; certainly more than enough to play the game.

You do get involved in discussion; everybody does to a certain degree. It has been noticeably less of late from the majority of you though, which seems to be directly correlated to enjoyment of the session.

Stu has put in a lot of time, and (considering he is learning this all as well) has come up with a fantastic and engaging storyline and I just feel we as a group have not done it justice, interacted with each other poorly and generally just 'skimmed' which has annoyed all of us at one point or another.

I want to make it clear that I am in no way 'finger pointing'; all of us have sat idly by whilst this has been going on. Perhaps we could have helped you guys engage more, explained things better or otherwise made sure you knew what was going on; perhaps you could have tried harder to enjoy the story, despite the difficulties rather than berate the game, who knows what exactly went wrong.

I hope that we can sort things out, I do enjoy Friday nights, I enjoyed greatly the buzz of excitement in the car home after a great session and I sincerely hope we can all get back that way.

_____________________
Baggins
Yes I am drunk, but you are ugly and in the morning i shall be sober.

In order to re-write a character sheet you would need to understand what it means in the first place, most of the jargon means nothing to me, therefore I cannot re-write it. It might as well be printed in Japanese....

If "game exile" is an issue for anyone else, I think Gruff mentioned it, or something similar, then please let me know.

You cannot post new topics in this forumYou cannot reply to topics in this forumYou cannot delete your posts in this forumYou cannot edit your posts in this forumYou cannot create polls in this forumYou cannot vote in polls in this forum